unz | In 2010, Harvard duo Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons published The Invisible Gorilla,
which detailed their study of the human capacity to overlook even the
most obvious things. In one of their experiments, Chabris and Simons
created a video in which students wearing white and black t-shirts pass a
basketball between themselves. Viewers were asked to count the number
of times the players with the white shirts passed the ball, and many
were later very satisfied to find that they were accurate in their
counting. This satisfaction was tainted, however, when they were asked
if they had spotted “the gorilla.” Amidst considerable confusion, the
video would then be replayed for the puzzled viewers, who were stunned
to see a man in a gorilla suit walk among the students and balls, take
up a position in the center of the screen, and wave at the camera.
They’d missed him entirely in their initial viewing. The study
highlighted the capacity for humans to become fixated on set tasks,
events, or other distractions, and miss even the most elaborate and
remarkable of occurrences.
When
it comes to Jewish activism, and especially Jewish activism in the area
of censorship and mass migration, I fear that the same dynamics are at
work. Panicked by this or that website or YouTube channel being defunded
or banned, we miss the ‘Invisible Gorilla’ — a plan of action far more
horrifying and deadly in its implications than any single act of
censorship.
There
are essentially two forms of censorship. The hard kind we are very
familiar with. It consists in the banning or removal of websites,
videos, books, podcasts, and social media accounts. It extends to
defunding and deplatforming, and it reaches its apogee in the banning of
activists from entering certain countries, in the arrest of activists
on spurious grounds, and in the development of new laws with harsh
criminal penalties for speech. These methods are dangerous and rampant,
and I myself have fallen victim to several of them.
I
think, however, that softer, more diffuse methods of censorship are even
more insidious and perhaps even more catastrophic. We could consider,
for example, the manipulation of culture so that even if certain speech
is not illegal and carries no legal repercussions, it nevertheless leads
to the loss of employment, the destruction of education opportunities,
and the dissolving of one’s relationships. This is a form of cultural
self-censorship, involving the modification of in-group standards, that
has demonstrable Jewish origins.
“Soft” censorship can also take the form of socio-cultural prophylaxis.
Take, for example, the recent initiative of the U.S. State Department
to initiate a drive to engage in the global promotion of philo-Semitic
(pro-Jewish) attitudes. I really don’t believe that this will play out
in the manner the State Department hopes, and I watch with interest to
see precisely what the methodologies of this policy will be. I sincerely
doubt its prospects for success. But what other way can this be
interpreted than as a preventative measure, obstructing the growth of
organic attitudes that, let’s face it, are more likely to skew to the
anti-Jewish? Finally, isn’t it in the nature of contemporary culture,
with its emphasis on entertainment, consumption, and sex, to be the
perfect environment in which to hide many “Invisible Gorillas”? Isn’t it
a whirlwind of fixations and distractions, replete with untold numbers
of “woke” viewers happy to report that they’ve been enthusiastically
counting passes and have the accurate number? Isn’t it rather the axiom
of our time that, from the idiotic Left to the idiotic Right, Invisible
Gorillas stroll freely and unhindered, laughing and waving as they go,
hidden in plain sight?
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